A Genocide Narrative
Whenever the word is used in connection with Gaza, brace yourself for fake news
The moral squalor and mendacity of the “anti-Zionist,” i.e. antisemitic, progressive Left has been well on display since October 7, 2023. The bodies of the dead, victims of Hamas’ bloody pogrom, had not grown cold before the comrades took to the streets in America and Europe—to denounce Israel and the Jews. And it was not long before these vile people took to charging the “settler-colonialists” of Israel with the crime of genocide.
To thus revile a people who’ve experienced actual genocide is a specimen of effrontery that would cause even Mr. Orwell, the inventor of doublethink, to raise an eyebrow. But it’s of a piece with the Left’s standard operating procedure, which is to dehumanize its enemies with some demon word: fascist, misogynist, homophobe, transphobe, etc. and so forth. So now the Jews being welcomed to that club in the character of genocidal mass murderers.
Antisemitism has always rested on a foundation of lies. In the nineteenth century there appeared in Russia a tract titled The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which purported to detail Jewry’s nefarious plan to dominate the world. That charge and its variants remain popular to this day in antisemitic circles. When Ilhan Omar intimates that American Jews harbor “dual loyalties” or that Israel controls American foreign policy, she’s harping on that string.
The creation of the Jewish state was made the occasion for a fresh volume of antisemitic conspiracy theories, eventually buttressed with postmodern theories of oppressor/oppression, of which charge of genocide is a kind of apotheosis. For Jew haters, its special charm lies in its cruelty. How better to vent one’s bigotry than to turn the tables on the Jews, making a mockery of the world-historical scourge that was visited on them in the mid-twentieth century? It’s the ultimate in fake news: an elaborate narrative supported by interlocking falsehoods.
But the charge is false, and ludicrously so. No matter how carelessly one treats the word, there’s no way in which genocide can be applied to the conflict between the Jews of Israel and the Palestinian Arabs—except in the case of Palestinian nationalism, which is founded on a principle of river-to-sea ethnic cleansing. And if the Jews are engaged in genocide, they’ve made a bad job of it. In the immediate aftermath of the War of Independence, fewer than 200,000 Palestinian Arabs remained in Israel. Today there are two million of them: citizens of the Jewish state with full civil and political rights.
So much, incidentally, for the stupid claim that Israel is an “apartheid state.”
As for Gaza, the charges leveled against Israel by the progressive Left are false from start to finish. Gaza was not “occupied” or “under siege” by Israel prior to October 7. In 2005 all Jewish settlements in Gaza were dismantled, their occupants were relocated and the IDF withdrew its forces. Two years later, Hamas seized power in a bloody coup against the Palestinian Authority administration and took control of the territory. Subsequently, it used Gaza as a base for its campaign of terror against Israel.
Therefore, the responsibility for the misery of the Palestinians of Gaza rests squarely with Hamas.
Nor is there any truth to the charge that Israel is engaged in the “indiscriminate” bombardment of Gaza or the deliberate targeting of civilians and civilian infrastructure. Israel does all that it can to minimize civilian casualties and collateral damage But Hamas hides behind both and, indeed, seeks to maximize civilian casualties for propaganda purposes: The more martyrs the better.
If Israel really were engaged in a genocidal slaughter, the war would have ended months ago, with the Gaza Strip completely depopulated. That would be genocide. And we have a historical example by go by: the Warsaw Ghetto uprising.
Hamas-hugging progressives know all this. They’re quite well aware that their charge of genocide is a lie. But it’s a noble lie, an “anti-Zionist” lie, a lie that hits the settler-colonialist Jews, a lie that slaps a coat of whitewash on their bigotry and hate. And it’s cruel. They thrill to that—as no doubt their predecessors in Germany from 1933 to 1945 thrilled to the cruelties of the Final Solution.
But the genocide lie is also counterproductive. Indeed, the great upsurge of antisemitism in America and Europe has reminded the Jews of Israel and the Diaspora that they can rely on no one but themselves. This, the founding principle of the Jewish state, is confirmed by every antisemitic outrage on campus, every act of betrayal by supposed allies like Joe Biden, every biased and slanted story that appears in the media.
So Israel, acting alone, is going to finish off Hamas, come what may. And only that, not some UN resolution, State Department demarche, or traffic-blocking demonstration, can free the Palestinians of Gaza from the tyranny of the Islamofacist death cult that has oppressed them for almost twenty years.
What they’ll make of their freedom remains to be seen.
Many people who like to use the word "genocide" know perfectly well there is no such thing, it is only a political tactic, and an effective one for ignorant people.
Perfectly stated, down to the word. Thank you.